Precious Doll in This Ugly World

Summary: A female Ash wants to go on a journey, only to find out how dangerous it can really be. Rose-colored lens are smashed as she gets stuck facing human trafficking and the evils of humanity.

Little Girl Lost

Seven days ago, her father left them behind. He was
leaving to go on a pokémon
journey. He would call and check in with them all the time. He promised them.

Her mother screamed “Liar! Liar! Liar!” over and over
when she was alone in her room late at night, and her little six year old self
would listen in behind her mother’s closed and locked door.

This, Ashelia Ketchum realized, was the beginning of a
different life for her.

In Pallet, it was a rather small population and everyone
knew everyone and eventually “everything.” Her father’s abandonment (this was a
word she’d learned from “Mrs. 1273” when she walking passed her one day, after
school was over) was widely spread and gossiped about. She tended to listen
closely and observe everyone, and notice little things that people liked to
think she wouldn’t understand or catch in the first place, because of her age.

She didn’t have friends her age. There were a lack of
girls around her age, and the few girls close enough didn’t like the same
things she did. She loved pokémon,
she played rougher and more actively, didn’t dress up, and tended to hang
around boys more because of this. She was even more content to shorten her name
to ‘Ash’, because it was shorter, catchier, and easier to say, despite how
boyish it sounded.

Ash didn’t care.

But even if she played more and hung around the boys, she
wasn’t really friends with them either. They didn’t want to be “friends” with a
girl. Some of them were dumb enough
to even think she had cooties. She always rolled her eyes at that –it was so
stupid and immature.

And so, a lack of friends led a friendless her to be
alone and compensate by paying attention to everyone and everything. She
noticed a lot of things, saw stuff she was sure she wasn’t supposed to know.
Listened and probably learned about things she was too young to know about. Watched
and knew things that she was much more comfortable not knowing.

Sometimes she wished she had been born a male and could
just play with Gary Oak and the other boys, and be dumb with the rest of them.

But she was a girl and she hated
how lonely that made her.

Gary, the famous Professor Oak’s grandson, was
technically her only real friend, despite how much he always said he wasn’t and
called her “a stupid girl!” Whenever she became too bored or lonely, she would
always walk the long way to his house and pester him until he agreed to hang
out with her, and the two of them would secretly play together. She was doing
that right then too. Only, Gary saw her coming while he was walking out of his
house and his nose scrunched up.

“What are you
doing here?” he asked snottily.

She visibly bristled. “Visiting you, duh!”

“Hmph! Well, I’m going to go to the park to play with my
friends, so I don’t have time for you,” Gary folded his arms across his chest.

“Can I come?” Ash became excited.

“No way! Boys only!” he pulled down an eyelid and stuck
out his tongue. After, he straightened and began walking away from her.
“Anyway, maybe I’ll play with you some other time. Smell ya later!”

Ash pouted and wondered what she was going to do now. The
door opening again caught her attention, and she saw Professor Oak getting
ready to fetch the newspaper she just noticed was by her feet.

“Asheila! What are you doing here? Ah, if you’re looking
for Gary, I believe he just left,” the professor told her apologetically.

Ash’s pout worsened. “It’s Ash, Professor. And I know. He
just left.”

Oak smiled at her, reaching out to ruffle her hair. “I
know, why don’t you come with me and look at the pokémon out back. You can even help me take care of
some of them, if you’d like.”

Her eyes brightened up. “Really? I want to, Professor!
Please?”

He chuckled and soon enough Ash was looking over a
multitude of pokémon.
After lunchtime, Oak was observing a flock of bird pokémon that Ash didn’t know what they were, while
she frolicked around with a few Rattata and Pidgey.

She loved poké́mon. They loved her and
would never leave her, so she would love them and never leave them back.

Ever since, she spent even more time at Gary’s home
(which was also Professor Oak’s home too). But she didn’t really play with Gary
anymore, who had also taken to playing more with his friends and pretending to have
pokémon battles.

It was okay, because she played with pokémon for real and “Sammy”
would tell her and teach her all about pokémon,
which was much better than playing with all those dumb boys anyway. Sammy,
which Professor Oak let her call him, had quickly become her best friend (even
if he was actually her only). He would
tell her lots of stories, and she especially loved the ones about his pokémon journey, back before he
decided he’d rather become a Pokémon
Researcher. Her absolute favorite was about Sammy meeting a boy named Ash (just
like her!), who he had met when he had rescued a Celebi and had traveled to the
future. He’d even showed Ash a sketch he’d drawn of Celebi and the Pikachu that
had belonged to the Ash from his story. She decided she would definitely want a
Pikachu for her starter just like Ash the Boy.

That had led to Sammy smiling sadly and chuckling, and
she had watched him in confusion.

“You remind me a
lot of him, Ash,” Sammy sounded really sad and wistful. “Although, he was a lot
more…dense and louder. And much more impulsive and rasher than you, certainly.
At least you have a good head on your shoulders and think more before you act
or say anything. Hopefully that’ll stay with you while you grow up, huh?”

But Sammy had still sounded really sad and like he’d
missed his old friend, which made Ash want to have a Pikachu as her starter
even more.

Drawn into her thoughts, she’d only broken out of them
when she heard the doorbell. She curiously and eagerly began to make her way
from her bedroom to the ground floor of her home, when she heard Sammy and her
mother talking. Guessing it was Sammy who’d come, she guiltily stayed hidden
and listened in.

“Professor, there’s no way I can sign this,” her mother
sounded unhappy. “In fact, I refuse to.”

“Delia, think of your daughter. Ash absolutely loves pokémon. Won’t you just let her
come and enjoy the summer camp?” Sammy tried to reason with her.

“…”

Ash bit her lip as she waited for her mother’s reply. She
knew now what was going on –Sammy was trying to get her mother to sign the
permission slip for Ash to attend the Pokémon
Summer Camp he was hosting. She wasn’t sure how well it’d work; her mother
seemed to really dislike pokémon
these days.

“I don’t want to get her too interested in pokémon,” her mother suddenly
confessed. “She might…she might want to go on her own pokémon journey when it’s time.”

“Would that be so bad?” Sammy asked in confusion.
“Unless…Delia, you wouldn’t feel it would be like she would be leaving you just
like Faron did, do you?”

“Don’t mention him to me,” her mother said sharply. “And
no… not completely. It’s just….she’s all that I have, Professor…Samuel. She’ll
go off so young –she’s pretty and she can be so naïve. She’ll be taken
advantage of, and who knows what else can happen to her. If she’d been born a
boy, like the doctors had told me she was supposed to be, I sometimes wonder if
I would feel this anxious. I know I’d still fuss over him, but…Dear Arceus,
there’s just this buildup of anxiety and stress and terror inside of me at the thought of her going out and traveling by
herself, and I have nightmares of all the things that could happen to her.”

Sammy was trying to be reassuring. “Don’t be afraid,
Delia. There have been plenty of girls who have gone on their own pokémon journey. Ash would be
fine.” But even he didn’t sound so sure.

For a moment, Ash didn’t hear anything else. And then her
mother quietly spoke.

“Just for camp. That’s it. I’ll…sign the form.”

As they finished up, Ash quietly stayed where she was,
sliding to sit on the floor and resting her chin on her knees as she wrapped
her arms around her bent legs in comfort.

She was happy she got to go to the summer camp, but
now…now she wasn’t so sure how she felt about pokémon journeys and going on one. A part of her
felt sad she was probably not going to be allowed on one, and another felt the
creeping fear of going on one, after hearing their words.

Sometimes, she really, really
hated that she paid so much attention, and wished she could just be cocky,
confident, and brash in ignorance like Gary.

The summer camp had been great so far. Ash was having a
lot of fun! The best part was that she got to play with a lot more kids her
age, even boys who didn’t care she was a girl and girls who liked the same
things as her. To them, the most important of anything was pokémon –exactly what Ash had
always thought!

Maybe they weren’t lifelong friends, but she was happy to
be included and liked all the same. And they were friends for now at least.

“Ash, are you busy?” Sammy came looking for her.

She shook her head wildly, all giddy and feeling
childish. “Nuh uh.”

He smiled at her and knelt to where she sitting on the ground.
“There’s a Poliwag I brought in earlier, except it’s been moving about. I think
it’s lost in this forest. I know you really know the forest around here
clearly, so would you mind looking for it for me? If you can’t find it, come
back. It shouldn’t have gone too far, so I don’t want you going too deep into
the forest either.”

Ash scrambled and gave him a toothy grin, straightening
up the slightly big on her miniature lab coat Sammy had gotten for her. She
gave him a thumbs up.

“Don’t worry! I got this, Sammy.”

She was going to set off on an adventure! Ash giggled to
herself and headed to the woods. It actually hadn’t taken her too long to find
the Poliwag. Only it was with a young girl with honey-colored hair and blue
eyes that were tearing up, and she was holding onto her knee. Looking closely,
Ash could see that it was bleeding a bit.

“Hi! Are you okay?” Ash bounded up to her.

“I’m Serena,” the other girl sniffled. “I got lost from
Professor Oak’s Summer Camp, and I tripped over this Poliwag.”

Ash whipped out a handkerchief and knelt by Serena,
wrapping it around her injured knee. She tapped Serena’s nose playfully.

“That’s a good luck charm, Serena! It’ll make the pain go
away.”

“It still hurts though,” Serena rubbed her eyes.

Ash surprised her when she all of a sudden grabbed Serena
and carried her like a bride, easily lifting her up despite being slightly
smaller.

“Don’t worry! Don’t give up until it’s over, okay? But
for now I’ll be your Knight Without Armor!”

She hadn’t realized it then, but
for the first time she had made a lifelong friend, and with another girl at
that.

“Professor Oak, we just brought in a wild Pikachu,” Ash
heard one of Sammy’s aides say. “It’s really injured, but it doesn’t want to let
anyone come near it. It shoots off electricity at whoever comes near it. We’ve
tried to get it back into the pokéball
we originally put it in to safely and quickly transfer it here, but it’s
refusing to.”

“I see,” Sammy replied. “It’s in the Corral, right? Leave
it be for now. Perhaps if it can see how happy and cared for pokémon are here, it’ll feel
better about being here and around us. We’ll still have to monitor it to make
sure its condition doesn’t worsen.”

Ash curiously left them behind and headed to the Corral,
going on a search for the Pikachu. She saw it lying by the area usually
inhabited by the grass pokémon,
where it lay on soft grass and practically hid in it. It was quick to notice
her approaching, but she only slowed down and didn’t completely stop. Plopping
onto her knees, she started to crawl towards it. It watched her warily. An
arm’s length away, it shot electricity at her, so she stopped.

She tilted her head and stayed on all fours, staring at
it.

“Pika? Pika Pika, Pikachu,” Ash blurted out and it stared
back at her strangely. “Pika?”

It unwillingly giggled and slowly, slowly came to her,
hesitantly butting its head against her bowed one.

“Pika,” it replied smartly, and then lightly slapped her
head a few times with his tail.

Ash giggled too and reached out to pet Pikachu’s head.
Gently, she reminded herself. Gently. She couldn’t be rough, like how she
played rough with the boys, or play rowdy just because she usually was, girl or
not.

Gentle…

Later, Sammy found both of them lying
in that pasture, curled up around each other. He scooped them up into his arms
and carried them back to the main part of the lab.

A little after all that, Ash turned seven. As a birthday
present, Sammy was bringing her along to a medical convention in Celadon City,
where after he’d take her around the city and show her everything. While he was
at the convention, she was supposed to stay in the hotel room and watch TV,
order room service, and whatever else was available to her in the room.

She missed Pikachu. She wished she could have brought
him, but her mother had seen them off and she wasn’t supposed to know that Ash
kinda, sort of, maybe already had a
pokémon. Or was
preparing for a pokémon
journey. Neither of which her mother would approve of.

But that was just details.

Even though she was supposed to stay in the room, she was
bored and restless. If she was quick…maybe she could just, only a little…go outside
for a bit and see what the city looked like. She wouldn’t stray too far.

Mind made up, she snuck outside and wandered around the
area close to the hotel.

“Hey there, love. What are you doing around here, by
yourself? Are you lost?” Ash blinked and looked at the man that had been
talking to her.

He wore a kind smile, dressed in a forest green
tracksuit, and was holding a Vulpix in his arms.

“No, I was just exploring,” she told him, eyes wide.

He laughed. “I see. An adventurous girl, huh? You want to
come over and pet Vulpix? She’s shy, but she likes attention. Little girls like
cute things, don’t they?”

She made an agreeing noise, coming over curiously and
reaching a hand towards the quiet pokémon.
Without warning, her wrist was snatched by the man and he was pulling her
closer.

“Now, now. Don’t make a fuss or else,” his voice had
turned menacing and he was gripping her wrist tightly. She whimpered. “Cute
little girls like you should keep quiet and just stand around looking pretty.”

“And I think disgusting men like you should find
themselves bereft of their life,” another man’s voice spoke up and Ash saw a
taller man, with broad shoulders and dressed in an expensive vivid orange suit,
stand behind the man.

For some reason, the man holding onto her stiffened. He
then quickly let go of her and moved away, and Ash only caught a glimpse of
something dark and metallic disappearing back into the well-dressed man’s suit
jacket, before the man took his hand back out and let it rest by his side.

“Be gone,” he barked at the man that had scared her, and
immediately he was gone. Then he was turning to her. “Should you be out here
alone?”

She looked down. “…No. I should be in my room, but I was
alone and bored.”

For a moment he was quiet, before he sighed. “Come. Let
us return to your hotel. I’ll escort you back, little one.”

She followed behind dutifully, though she did make sure
he was going to the right place and that he was leading her there in the first
place. There, he brought her to the hotel restaurant, where he ordered her a
sundae and she delightfully dug in. She was confused, but pleased that he was
staying with her.

“Have you ever heard of not talking with strangers, much
less going with one?” he asked her wryly, but also ironically.

She ducked her head timidly.

“Next time, scream when someone grabs you like that,” he
told her firmly. “No matter what they say. Screaming attracts attention, and
you’ll likely be saved.”

She gave him a small smile.

His name was Giovanni, she found out. He had a Persian
that he let out and let Ash pet and hold tightly onto after she ate. He
listened to her patiently and actually talked to her. It was the first time she
actually felt wanted, and not a
burden.

His hand settled heavily on her head and rubbed it
gently. He looked at her seriously and she watched him intensely in return.

“This world is an ugly
place. You shouldn’t be so trusting, dolcezza,”
he murmured. He rubbed her head one last time and then stood up.

263Adder:
Okay so I adore this story. I only knocked one star off plot for historical inaccuracies because I'm a bit of a stickler for that. The ending broke my heart though, considering you already changed history couldn't you (SPOILER) change it a bit more and have them together!!!! I want an alternative...

Julia Summers PA:
Reading this now. It's fun, hilariously fabulous yet taste of what you desire in a unusual read. I will post an actual review when I am finished. But so far loving the flow and the story seems to keep me drawn

Flik:
Hi! ^.^ huge fan of yours on ff.net! When I saw the note about this contest on The Way We Smile, I couldn't help but rush over here, create an account, and vote! XD Seriously love this story and would recommend it to anyone! :D best FT fanfiction out there. Amazing story, amazing concept that wa...

Jenn Deering:
This is a go-to story for when you're needing a little happiness in your life. It's well-crafted, and characters are true to their show-selves. The pace is right, there are minimal grammatical errors, and the plot is fresh.

FateFellShort:
I have read this story and have followed the writers on tumblr from the beginning. Its a wonderful story. Beautifully written with a really nice pace, that makes it enjoyable to read more than once. For me, fairy tail has very good characters but what the writers have done is give them more depth...

tyleroakleyfan:
thank you for writing this story I loved it. it was great I enjoyed every minute of it I couldn't stop reading you did a fantastic job. Thanks for killing ron he was starting to piss me off. he was being a dick. I love that you made it a gay love story its about time someone did. love it great job.

Ruby0h:
Overall I thought your story was really good! It drew me in right away and kept me interested as the story progressed. I loved the character of Kayla being inserted into this story, and the way she affected and shaped the life of the original story into something totally new and interesting. I lo...

Nadine Willard:
I loved this story so much! I generally can't stand super girly romance stories, but this one was so relatable! I could not stop reading this, I read it straight through!! I wish this was a series, not just a single story 😊

Usagi Kita:
This story is emotional from beginning to end. You get to watch the characters struggle and grow, maturing in different ways so that they come to be the people they are meant to be. Inea is insanely adorable, and his antics made me laugh more than once, and Kaedon is perfect for him in so many wa...